


Lovely Bullets

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Angst, F/M, Get Ready For Some Sad, Heavy Angst, M/M, Multiple Pairings, One Shot Collection, Prompt Fic, Separate Universes For Each Story, really sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:45:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9242642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: “It's strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.”― Veronica Roth, AllegiantA collection of one shots based on a list of "some of the saddest phrases in the English language" that I stumbled upon on Tumblr. Each one is centered on a phrase with its own individual story. These are all extremely sad, fair warning. Relevant warnings, pairings, and rating changes will be placed in a note at the top of each one.





	1. But You Promised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a welcoming gift I give to you the cliche death we all know and love, with a little twist.
> 
> Phrase: but you promised
> 
> Warnings for: character death, swearing

They never understood how heavy the bleeps of a heart monitor were until they measured the life of a friend. They were background noise in the silly hospital dramas their parents watched that they never got the appeal of, and when their parents shed tears for fictitious characters connected to those bleeps, they’d laughed at them. Adults were so strange; they swore they’d never understand them.

It looked like they really would never understand them, their chances used up.

Their parents probably heard the bleeps in a crowded sterile room before and that’s why they felt so heavy, even on TV. Maybe they understood this one thing, now. Maybe they would cry now too.

“We, um,” Stan started, but he never felt comfortable in hospitals and the nerves were making him jumpy. He turned away for a second, muttering a quiet _“oh god”_ under his breath as though the Lord would see him through this moment, right here, where his friend lay dying under entirely too many wires. Stan’s faltering strength swept across all of them, dragging their stomachs down with dread.

Kenny had experienced death many times. The ways he’d gotten to heaven or hell or anywhere in between were numerous and unique. They’d been gruesome or painful or both, but not like this. Kenny had never felt death like this. He wanted it to stop. The wires were too heavy, body too small and frail to be subjected to such a colossal failure. He had no words. What words could he give with Death in the doorframe, waiting to extend his bony touch and release him from aching bones? There were none to describe how strangely relieving that felt, that Death was there to touch him and carry him on into his afterlife. It was the gentlest way to die, in past experience. Death was not a cruel being, and he was especially kind to children.

“We were supposed to just get to be kids, you know?” Stan said, pointedly looking anywhere but the crisp white sheets tucking a child into an early grave. “We were s’posed to just, I dunno, fuck around at Stark’s pond and step on worms and laugh at girls before they got hot.” Stan scuffed his sneaker against the tiled floor, making a squeak. The heart monitor marched on.

The rest of them were eerily silent, and Kenny wasn’t sure if it was because they were uncomfortable or if there wasn’t anything else to say. He guessed it was a little of both. He held out a shaking hand and Stan clasped it desperately, his palms clammy and cold. They all needed strength in the face of death. He kept his eyes at the corner of the bed, where a teddy bear was tucked under a tiny arm. The machines just made him seem so _small._ Kenny’s chest ached. He could feel Death’s presence looming behind them all, inching ever closer with each bleep. There wasn’t much time left.

“I’ll miss you,” Kenny said, his hood temporarily abandoned in favor of clear speech. He couldn’t afford his words to be misheard, not this time with precious seconds draining on the clock. Stan’s grip on his hand tightened. He was afraid. They both were. He’d never felt death like this before.

Eric Cartman, who had been completely silent at the foot of the bed since they’d first shuffled in, broke the next silence with mumbled words. “You promised.”

“What?” Kenny asked, but it fell on deaf ears.

“I know, you didn’t mean it,” he sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, “but you promised. You fucking promised.”

Stan tore his eyes from the bed for just a second, gaze flitting to Cartman with confused awe at his sincerity. “Cartman, what are you talking about?”

It was the wrong second. He never got a chance to answer. With widened eyes and lungs drowning in ice-cold fear like he’d never felt before, Kenny watched Death press a gentle bony finger to his forehead. His body went slack and the heart monitor screamed at them, screamed at all of them as his soul vacated pained flesh and blood. He was gone.

The moments right after passed in a blur. Doctors rushed in and Cartman fell into a numbed silence, his face growing red while he tried to hold his cries in. Stan lunged forward to the side of the bed and gripped pale shoulders, shaking an empty vessel with fat tears staining the blue gown that he had complained about only two weeks ago. He’d put it on begrudgingly, with slow movements that showed just how painful it was to exist, and joked about how gross it was that his ass would be out all the time. Two weeks ago he was smiling and laughing. Now he was dead.

Nurses pushed them out of the room and they stood in a row alongside each other and Kenny remembered with a horrible twist in his chest that the pose was both so familiar and would forever be minus one. The bus stop would lose a set of antsy, fiery footprints. He allowed himself to cry the same moment that Stan allowed himself to sob. The hallway was flooding and they were drowning and no one was noticing.

“He promised,” Cartman gasped over strained vocal cords, “that when he got better he was gonna kick my ass for real this time. He said he was gonna kick my ass for everything I ever said about him and his stupid family. He promised.”

Sheila Broflovski swept passed them so fast Kenny almost didn’t see, but he heard her screams. She probably didn’t see them either; no one could. All she saw was a tiny freckled boy under a skewed green hat and lots of machines that couldn’t save him.

Kenny had never felt death like this before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I getcha?


	2. I've Never Told Anyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Butters tends to get the short end of the stick.
> 
> Loo loo loo, I've got some apples.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phrase: I've never told anyone
> 
> Warnings for: use of the word 'faggot,' homophobia/transphobia

Dresses were so pretty.

He thought they looked so very nice when they swished around ankles and knees and thighs. The chiffons and silks ruffled so gently in motion and the knits and taffetas stood strong and true to form. So many beautiful fabrics came together to make dresses, and he loved every one of them.

Though it was no small feat to reach it, he spent many afternoons inside his mother’s closet, stroking old evening gowns collecting dust in plastic bags and rolling textiles between his fingers. He read the tags on things to learn what they were made of, and what he liked the best. His favorite was pastel yellow with feathery chiffon that lined the bodice to imply a larger chest. Sometimes he plucked it from the rack and held it against him to swirl with it. He liked watching the lighter fabrics sway and fly on top of everything else, like a prelude to something draping wonderfully beneath. They were curtains being drawn to reveal an endless fruit tree farm. He thought the fruits should be apples, since they were his favorite.

It was another Tuesday afternoon that Leopold Stotch, known as Butters to all who loved him, found himself eyeing the yellow dress again. He stood still with one foot inside the walk-in closet, and the other wrinkling its toes in the carpet under a stripe of golden sun in his parents’ bedroom. He could see it billowing in a gentle breeze in his mind’s eye, the smooth cloth brushing against his bare arms and ankles. The thought made his chest feel flighty and funny. Still, he hesitated.

He stretched a careful hand out, yearning to pull it off its hanger and touch it again. He knew that it was wrong for boys to like dresses. He’d heard it a hundred, thousand times, from all the grown-ups he knew. Something still pulled him to this place though, and he almost wished it wouldn’t, wished his thoughts wouldn’t compel him to come again and again to the place that tempted him with what he couldn’t have. The key word was almost. Butters didn’t try too hard to stop.

It was the chirping of a bird in the tree branch just outside the window that snapped Butters from his intrusive thoughts and refocused his energy. He pushed forward with purpose on his one foot already inside and tugged gently on the yellow dress peeking out from the back of the closet to release it from its home. The dress fell over his arm and he hurried back out, careful not to step on it where it dragged slightly.

Today was a different day. When they played fairytales yesterday, Kenny showed up in a pretty dress, if not a little dirty and worn from overuse. The boys didn’t question it much. They needed a princess, anyway. Butters felt jealous of Kenny, and he watched him take for granted the way it felt soft and ticklish on his ankles where his boots didn’t cover his legs. Today, Butters was going to put on his mother’s yellow dress, his favorite; the one that made him think of apple trees.

He laid it out smooth over his parents’ comforter facedown, brushing a hand carefully over the bodice to keep it flat and prevent wrinkles. It smelled a little like the closet, which he only noticed if he pulled it out. His tiny hands found the zipper and pulled it down halfway, and in one fluid motion, he pulled the dress off the bed from its skirt and let it fall down, down, down until the sleeves hit his shoulders and the hem touched his calves.

He shut his eyes, feeling the world come to a grinding halt and suddenly feeling very guilty. Boys weren’t supposed to like dresses. He sighed with a half-breath that was interrupted by budding tears that confused him. He crossed his arms in front of him and tugged at the bodice to pull it back off, but he looked up just a moment too soon. He caught himself in the full-length mirror.

Butters tilted his head in wonder. He slowly lowered his arms and watched the oversized sleeves fall down his shoulders. Nothing about it fit him right, but for just a moment, Butters felt very beautiful. He took two tiny steps closer to the mirror and gasped softly as he felt the skirt sway on top of his pants. He scrambled to shove them off quickly and shivered at the sudden cold, but when the edges of the skirt brushed his bare legs he forgot the discomfort. It felt just as pretty as he imagined. New tears welled up in his eyes to match his goofy grin.

He raised his arms out to his sides, and with a little bend of his knees, he twisted in just one circle. He froze when he faced front again and he watched the fabric twist around him with the momentum. He felt so very alive and so very happy that he twirled and turned around again and again, giggling and tripping on his feet while yellow flowed like a bursting son from his hips. The chiffon on his chest flared out and around his arms. He squealed with glee, forgetting where he was and forgetting what all the grown-ups said about boys and dresses and faggots.

That was, until he heard the bedroom door handle twist.

Butters gasped and turned around sharply as he heard the door swing open to reveal his father, whose eyes fell on him immediately. He looked up at him but his father looked only at the yellow dress, and Butters abruptly felt very dirty with it on. He brought his hands up to cover his chest and he hopped over to where his pants lay wrinkled and discarded as though he could hide them both, but he felt a glare stab his chest like daggers.

Butters’ father was usually a very loud man. Whenever Butters messed up, he was sure to be yelling about it, and Butters always knew he was in trouble when his father raised his voice, which was almost all the time. For the first time though, he stood eerily silent, words escaping him. Butters thought this was much, much worse.

He stomped up to him and Butters flinched before his father took both his wrists and knelt down, forcing him to make eye contact. He smiled nervously. “Well, hello there dad! See, I was just tryin’ to…” Butters started, but he quickly realized he had no lie to tell. He gulped and the fake smile he’d conjured vanished.

His father stared at him so hard Butters thought his eyes were going to fall out. Then, finally, he spoke, but it wasn’t a yell. Instead it was a murmur, low and rumbly in a way that reminded Butters of scary thunderstorms but this scared him more. “Why did you do this, son?” He said, not expecting or wanting an answer.

“Well, I just thought the yellow was such a nice color, you see, an’ I thought, well, maybe I would like to try somethin’ new, an’ instead a’ just lookin’, well I’d put it on myself and see.” He saw no point in lying. He wished his dad would let go of his arms so he could rub his hands together to calm his nerves. His father was not so kind.

“How many people know about this, Butters?” He asked, and he knew he was demanding an answer this time.

“I-I’ve never told anyone, sir,” he stammered, feeling the light in his heart give way to a cold and cruel death under his father’s angry stare. He felt so very, very, very small.

“No one, _no one,”_ he growled, emphasizing his point by tugging on Butters’ wrists and making him bob with the force, “can ever know about this. _Never,_ boy.”

He gulped and swallowed the lump in his throat as he nodded. “Yes sir,” he whispered, and his dad let go of him. He stood and looked down on him with such painful fire in his eyes that Butters had to look away. He knew that if he cried in front of him he would be grounded for sure.

“Put it away and come down for supper.” His hand hesitated on the door handle and he turned back one more time to shoot ice through Butters’ veins. “I never want to see you in here again, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” and his father slammed the door behind him.

He tore the dress off as quickly as he could, feeling suddenly repulsed by its color and the way it felt and wanting it gone, gone, gone. He pulled the zipper back up with quaking fingers and wrapped its sleeves around its hanger like he’d never touched it. It stuck out so brightly that Butters shoved it further inside so he couldn’t see it at all. He tugged his pants back on and sang a song to turn off his tears like he usually did, but his favorite song was about apples, and he cried some more. He cried and watched the apple trees go rotten behind the curtains that he tucked between two black bags in his mother’s closet. He cried and watched his elation die behind its doors.

He used to think dresses were so pretty, but boys aren’t supposed to like dresses.


	3. I Trusted You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If he were honest, he would say that he’d seen this coming."
> 
> Stan's alcoholism is an ugly thing, just like the glass that Kyle hates so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one-shot features Stan/Kyle.
> 
> Phrase: I trusted you
> 
> Warnings for: swearing, alcoholism, blood

Writers and artists put too much meaning into glass. They used it to symbolize beauty, gentleness, purity, and anything under the sun to sound as pretentious as possible. His least favorite was fragility though, because it was always a beautiful fragility. Glass shatters with a tinkling song into jagged pieces that glitter in the light, all that garbage. Glass breaks and creates something equally as beautiful as what was once intact. At least that’s what they say.

Kyle thought it was a load of bullshit. There was nothing pretty about glass at all. Fragility didn’t deserve to be rewarded with pretty metaphors and symbolism. Nothing about the shattered glass on his kitchen floor was beautiful.

If he were honest, he would say that he’d seen this coming. Help only goes so far, and only as far as the needy allowed. It has to come from inside, his therapist said. He had to figure out this battle on his own and it wasn’t Kyle’s battle to win. Clearly he hadn’t figured it out, and Kyle’s therapist was full of shit for having disillusioned him with pretty fantasies that looked like drawbridges to success that were actually drawstrings. He tipped so easily off the tightrope and into the pit.

Once upon a time Kyle had been at the bottom of that pit. He kept his arms out and ready to catch him. Kyle was tired of lying in the pit, though. He was tired of knowing it was coming and waiting for the fall to damage his aching knees a little more with each catch. They threatened to collapse the last time and he grew too weary to hold his arms out anymore.

They went through the motions of their relationship well enough, he supposed. It was easy to sleep beside each other and kiss goodbye and say I love you because they’d done so for years. It was easy to ignore the dying roots beneath their floorboards. Kyle had to wonder if Stan saw it too, if he took the time to stop drinking.

Kyle watched three shots worth of vodka settle in the cracks of their kitchen tile between curved pieces of clear glass. He’d thrown the bottle there, ruining the glass and effectively silencing them both until only ragged breaths, remnants of yelling, punctuated the air. Stan’s eyes were murderous, even through the haze of too much to drink. Kyle had spilled his bitter release in an act of what Stan could only see as irrational anger. Kyle didn’t care, but he’d be wrong. He’d done it out of fear.

“The fuck is your problem today?” Stan asked, his voice husky and slow. He leaned on the entryway for support.

“What do you think?” Kyle snarled. He gestured at the mess he’d made splattered between them, wishing it’d tell him everything that he’d never have the time to say.

“You’ve lost your damn mind breaking shit-”

“No, _you’ve_ lost your damn mind. Look at you!” Kyle bit back, pointing a malicious finger at him. “You said you were done with this shit, Stanley!”

_"Don’t fucking call me that you son of a bitch-”_

“Don’t!” Kyle cried, tearing at his hair on either side of his throbbing skull. He wasn’t giving him time to respond, not today. “Just… don’t.” He heaved a huge breath through his nose, squeezing his eyes shut and praying for the patience to deal. This was a bad time, but then again, any time was a bad time. If he didn’t talk now, when the anger shook him to the core, he’d just grow tired again. He’d return to drained submission by the time Stan was lucid enough to have a meaningful discussion.

"Did you call into work again?” Kyle asked, pinching the bridge of his nose and massaging his temple as though it’d fight off his migraine.

“No.” Stan said. His tone was cold, he was angry.

“So you just didn’t show?” Kyle tried to glare but he felt the angry energy fading from him fast. It was all so _exhausting._ It was too much.

“Did, they sent me home. Said not to come back.” Stan swayed and Kyle fought the urge to lurch forward and steady him. Not now, he wasn’t going to catch him this time. He was _tired,_ he convinced himself, and he was _finished._

“So they fired you, then.”

“Yeah, ‘s why I was taking my turn with that,” he pointed at the ground, “b’fore you snatched it from my goddamn hands and threw it like a goddamn bitch.”

Kyle’s anger licked at his heart, wild flames reignited and burning him from the inside. “They fired you _because_ of that, asshole. You kept missing work. Stan, I’m so tired of this.” Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes that he didn’t bother to hold back. “I don’t think we can fix this, not anymore.”

His eyes grew wide with understanding. Kyle’s heart whispered _‘take it back, take it back’_ but his mind stood strong, and he watched heartbreak crack through brilliant blue eyes. “What d’you mean? No, no, take it back.” Stan shook his head, trying to clear it through the fog of a high blood alcohol content. “You don’t mean it, Kyle.”

“Yes I do.” He stood firm, straightening his back, watching as Stan did the exact opposite and shrank against the wall. “Every time we go through this, you say it’ll be different. I’m done. I can’t pay all the bills myself and I can’t deal with you going through a meltdown that costs a fortune all the damn time. I’ve tried to live with this for five fucking years Stan, and I’m too tired. I’m done.” He realized too late he’d rehearsed this. Maybe not consciously, but the words came too easily to be entirely candid.

Stan’s tears spilled over and Kyle hated that they matched the vodka on the floor. He hated them both. “No, don’t say that, baby. Don’t say that.”

Kyle felt his chest crack open as his tears threatened to match him. Baby was a sacred word. They didn’t do pet names, and Stan only used it at his most vulnerable. Kyle resisted doubling back with all his might, but Stan was dying before his eyes. He was _tired._ He was _done._

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Stan made a strangled sound in the back of his throat like a beaten dog. “I love you, Stan, but I can’t. I can’t keep this up.”

“You said you were gonna be there. You said, you said you were gonna stay and help me. D’you remember that?” Kyle nodded, not knowing what else to say. “You said you were gonna help me. I didn’t think I could do it, since I’ve been like this since the beginning, you remember, yeah?”

“I remember.” He brought a hand to his lips and clenched his teeth behind his fist, caving in on himself as he willed himself not to weep. Anger had propelled him but this sadness made his lungs collapse and fear double down until he felt the ground parting beneath him. He wished it’d swallow him whole.

“You said.” Stan hiccuped, choking on a cry. “I’ll never forget, you said ‘trust me, because I trust you to do this.’ You wanted me to trust you that everything would get better and you’d be there.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. Stan pushed off from the wall and walked toward him, but cut himself short with a loud yelp and suddenly he was stumbling backwards out of the kitchen. Kyle rushed forward in an instant, break-up be damned, but he froze at a loud crunch beneath his shoe.

In the middle of his ugly mosaic of glass, beads of blood were blooming in the alcohol. His foot was fine, protected by his shoe, but Stan had stepped forward too. He’d run into the couch in the next room and Kyle gasped at the blood smearing the bottom of his foot that he was nursing with loud groans. “Stan, let me-“

“I trusted you!” Stan wailed, and Kyle flinched. He stopped with his hand still outstretched. “You said ‘trust me,’ and I trusted you. Why don’t you trust me back?” He failed to pull a shard from his foot in his half-stupor and hissed at the sting.

“I-It’s not that simple,” Kyle stuttered, and it truly wasn’t. Nothing about this was simple.

“Why not? I love you, that’s all there is. I’ll go to therapy, I’ll fix it, just please, _please,”_ Stan choked, “ _please_ don’t go. I love you.”

Kyle listened to him gasp for air and watched him uselessly attempt to pick glass from his foot. He never responded. A few drops scattered over the carpet, nowhere else to go but down. Most damning of all, though, was that all Kyle thought of was how he would explain to the landlord when he broke the lease why blood was in his carpet.

Stan looked away to sob quietly, settling into the couch, and Kyle knew it was done. Maybe this time it would stick. Maybe he’d made the stakes high enough. Guilt stabbed his chest and he carefully stepped forward. Stan sat still while Kyle cleaned out his foot and they exchanged no more words.

Kyle spent several minutes doing nothing but stare at the marred floor, darting between the tile and Stan who’d drifted to sleep on the couch. He sighed and felt the weight of it all fall back on his shoulders, like he’d never said anything at all, like it always did. He had no better alternative than to try again, even with the little voice reminding him he’d done this four times already. He was so _tired,_ but Stan needed him. He tugged a blanket from the closet with the broom and draped it over him. He was still trapped at the bottom of the pit after all; he’d never left.

The blood and vodka smeared across the floor with each stroke of the broom. Broken glass was never beautiful like people said. He supposed the red did stand out against the tile, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can interpret this as ending however you wish, so in a way I guess you could imagine a happy ending. I don't, though.


End file.
